The third in David Edgar’s post-Cold War trilogy, which also includes Pentecost and The Shape of the Table.
An urgently topical account of a bloody conflict on Europe’s Eastern borders.
Beginning in early 1989 and spanning some twelve years, the play follows a team of peace negotiators attempting to resolve an ethnic conflict occurring within a fictional former Soviet republic.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in July 2001, transferring to the Pit Theatre, Barbican, London, in January 2002.
‘The greatest virtue of David Edgar’s enthralling new play is that it confronts the kind of intractable ethnic conflict that has blown up in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise. Edgar’s erudition and appetite for major subject-matter have paid off. This must be seen’
— Daily Telegraph
‘David Edgar is one of our few surviving writers of public plays, and The Prisoner’s Dilemma continues his exploration of the reconfiguration of global politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall… Engrossing’
— Sunday Times
